Fall is an excellent time to have a cozy, romantic wedding. The season’s cool breezes, changing foliage, and bountiful harvests make a perfect backdrop for intimate ceremonies and sunset receptions.
To create an inviting ambiance, you’ll want to include fall’s rich tones and seasonal motifs in your wedding theme. Reds, oranges, yellows, deep greens, and purples will bring vibrant warmth to your venue.
Our tips will help you incorporate the autumn hues you love into your wedding day.
1. Choose Your Theme
Before you decide on a color scheme for your wedding, think about the mood and theme for the day. Whether you’re going for a rustic, contemporary, or vintage vibe at an urban or countryside venue, you’ll want your color choices to complement every aspect of your wedding from start to finish.
Pick a color or two that people will easily recognize, and use them to center all your wedding designs. Include these colors on your invitations, and integrate them into your attire, decor, and refreshments.
You can even wear a bridal necklace with a brilliantly colored stone in a shining gold finish.
2. Coordinate Your Colors
Warm yellows, oranges, reds, and purples, plus darker browns, greens, and navy, are classic autumn hues. To create a harmonious scene, choose a bold hue like plum, mustard, or pumpkin as the primary color of your theme; then, add complementary accent colors to create a unique colorway.
Inviting orange and yellow hues can enhance a harvest motif, and they work well with deep reds and browns. For a rustic, nature-inspired celebration, you can pair deep greens and browns with metallic gold accents to create a look that’s both glamorous and relaxed.
For a more formal affair, combine plum or burgundy with navy to create a sophisticated atmosphere.
3. Design Your Stationery and Signage
If you’re including fall motifs, like acorns, leaves, and squash, into your wedding theme, make sure to render them in your chosen colors and integrate them into all your wedding media.
Set the tone with invitations that showcase your color scheme in their paper, ink, borders, designs, and envelopes. You can also use these designs for your seating charts, wedding programs, signage, and thank you cards to create a cohesive feel.
4. Pick Colorful Bridesmaids’ Dresses
Colorful bridesmaids dresses are a tradition at weddings, so have these special ladies wear gowns in your wedding hues. Consider fabrics in deep solids or subtle prints that highlight or blend rich reds, deep greens, or warm orange and yellow hues.
Work with your bridesmaids to create flattering looks; if your chosen hues are too loud, they can pick up your color scheme with colored shoes, sashes, or accessories.
5. Dress Up Your Suits and Tuxedos
Modern men are embracing more colorful looks at formal events, and wearing a suit or tux in one of your fall wedding shades is a wonderful way to celebrate the season.
If this bold attire is “too much,” the groom and groomsmen can always wear pocket squares, vests, socks, ties, or boutonnières in your chosen hue.
6. Brighten the Bride’s Bouquet
Make the bride’s bouquet even more beautiful by incorporating autumnal colors into the design. Sunflowers in deep cherry and bold yellow hues and orange-tinted roses can make striking additions to any arrangement.
You can also add wildflowers, eucalyptus, ferns, and other plants and greenery to make your bouquet a showstopper.
7. Create Colorful Centerpieces
Table centerpieces are a classic decor element at your wedding reception, so make them lovely and bright. Incorporate your chosen hues into your design by using wood or stone slabs, bowls, or vases to highlight flowers like dahlias, strawflowers, and hydrangeas.
Adding elements like acorns and oak leaves or produce like figs, apricots, artichokes, and gourds on tables will create a sense of abundance.
8. Enrich Your Tableware and Linens
While you’re planning your wedding decor, think about which tablecloths, runners, and napkins you’d like to use at your reception, and get them in your wedding colors.
If you’re using white or beige tablecloths, you can dress up your place settings with napkin rings and chargers that coordinate with your color scheme.
Be sure not to overdo it—try to choose either bright tableware or table linens (but not both) to make your wedding colors shine.
9. Design a Bold Wedding Cake
If your wedding cake is the star of your reception, include your colors in its design! Be subtle or go all out. Have your baker create a muted ombre frosting, or cover your cake in fall flowers and motifs.
You could also decorate a naked carrot cake with carrot curls, figs, and deep red blossoms or have an architectural wedding cake with a stylized maple leaf garnish.
This is your chance to make a statement with fantastic frosting and decorations, so celebrate your love with beautiful fall hues.
10. Enliven Your Wedding Refreshments
To enliven your post-wedding celebration, start a conversation with snacks and drinks in fall colors!
You can decorate the bar in your color palette or offer a signature cocktail that features a colored liqueur! Root-vegetable hors d’oeuvres and colorful straws, paper umbrellas, and cocktail napkins can also add fun to your party.
11. Elevate Your Wedding Photos
When the fall foliage is inspiring your ceremonial colors, let it dress up your wedding photos, too. The changing leaves can add character to your surroundings and make your images especially memorable.
A porch, patio, or gravel path surrounded by red, gold, and orange trees can make a beautiful backdrop for portraits and treasured shots of family and friends.
12. Give Glamorous Wedding Favors
If you want to impress your guests, thank them for their presence at your wedding by giving them a small token of appreciation. Gifts like candles, jars of honey, and candies can easily coordinate with your color scheme, and if they don’t, you can wrap them to match your theme.
Celebrate Your Autumn Wedding in Living Color
Fall weddings can be a gorgeous way to celebrate the depth of your love. Whether you’re looking for affordable engagement rings set with bright gems or you’re dressing in brilliant hues, you’ll be sure to enjoy the day a little more when you include a bit of color.
By making autumn’s rich a central part of your big day, you’ll create an event to remember.
